Work Package 3 -External Structures

WP3 will investigate whether reduction of mobility induce changes in the ontogenetic trajectories of the form size and shape of limb and tarsal bones compared to wild control populations and how these changes co vary with the changes in muscular system.

The size and shape of the 3D objects will be acquired through 3D Cartesian coordinates combining anatomical (1) landmarks on the repeatable topographic points of the bones extremities (2) semi-landmarks on curves and surfaces lacking anatomical landmarks. This configuration of Cartesian coordinates will be standardized using Generalized Procrustes superimposition (GPA) procedures to generate a new set of shape coordinates free from information of size, position and orientation. GPA will also generate data pertaining to centroid size which is a measure of absolute size.

Three dimensional visualizations of the shape differences between experimental treatments for different predictor variables (size, age etc...) will allow to precisely identify were the anatomical differences are located on the structures of interest, in addition to allowing us to quantify the magnitude of change due to the different mobility regimes imposed by the experimental designs. The functional co-variation between skeleton and muscle morphology will be investigate thanks to the MRI data on experimental specimens and muscle dissection on the control population.